


they will rush together

by Starbrow



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 21:38:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16071857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbrow/pseuds/Starbrow
Summary: Lucy becomes a Land Girl and finds a Sea Girl.





	they will rush together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/gifts).



“Not many new recruits these days,” said the subscription officer laconically.

Lucy raised her chin half a centimeter. Growing old enough to be in the WLA, the Women’s Land Army, had been a dream of hers since a small child. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like hundreds of men returning from war and back to the countryside stop her. “I’m healthy, strong, young, and you’ll pay me a lot less than a man,” she pointed out. Her frankness seemed to surprise the officer, who blinked and finally shrugged and pushed the paperwork towards her.

Lucy hid her smile.

All of those things were true. The age required on the form, 17, was almost true. She would have her birthday while on assignment, and nobody even asked for verification. The medical examination was laughably minimal; she could walk, bend down, and read a sign. She was cleared to go.

She was a Land Girl.

The uniform she’d watched march past on dozens of girls come into town - it was hers now. She adjusted the points of the crisp white blouse between the tie to perfection - not that they would stay that way for long - and smoothed the warm pullover over it all. The sturdy corduroy breeches, she surveyed with supreme satisfaction. Those and the boots - Wellies and leather, for rain or shine - would let her do exactly anything she needed to do. The jaunty brimmed hat was pinned firmly to the top of her bob, the knapsack of changes of clothes and necessaries slung over her shoulder, and thus she was ready to face the world.

It felt good to have a clear duty again. School had had to be finished, but that was less duty and more millstone. Having cast said stone off into the sea for good, Lucy felt light enough to fly. And now, she had a job, the one she’d always wanted. Somewhere she could be out of doors and soaking what rays of sun she could away from the fog of the city.

The small group she was assigned to training with walked out on a chilly spring day. As the train bore them off to Shropshire, Lucy gazed out through the glass and pondered what adventures awaited her in the countryside this time.

~*~

They’d warned her about hard work. It hadn’t been an exaggeration. As the only Land Girl at Farmer Prescott’s, Lucy found herself given every bit of drudgery and unpleasant job that there was to be done. She quickly realized that there were plenty of tasks the men were all too happy to leave to the girl who made 12s a week less than them.

The rat-catching was by far the worst. She’d hoped very much after the month of training that she would never have to touch the horrid work again. As luck would have it, there was a nasty infestation that month at the farm around the barn and it was her job to smoke them all out. And collect the bodies, of course.

“This is what doing your duty looks like,” she informed the well-fed cat who sat lazily sunning itself in a spot by the barn, watching her poke out holes in the weeds and lay down the traps. “Clearly, you’ve neglected it. But no matter. A champion has come. Queen Lucy the Valiant, Lady of the Eastern Sea, Duchess of the Dancing Lawn, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion, and Lady-Killer of Vermin.”

The cat yawned. Lucy laid more traps. And when the vermin were finally deceased, she grimly fished them out of the holes and collected them by their tails and presented their corpses first to the farmer and then the fire. The girl with gloves up to her elbows and fistfuls of dead rats earned grudging respect from the farmhands that day, and an extra serving of roasted potatoes from Mrs. Prescott that night.

~*~

Harvest-time was legendary among the veteran Land Girls. Lucy, who had only seen others on the rare Sunday when she was allowed to walk into town, saw memories behind her eyelids at night, of leaves of a thousand brilliant colors and the swirl of pipes and hand-drums in crisp clean air, the charred smokiness of bonfires, the laughter of games played to finish the work and when the work was done. She fiercely treasured the not-quite-dreams, that she wouldn’t let them slip away like they had the first time she’d come back to England. And at Christmas, she could finally speak of them with the friends of Narnia.

But harvest in Shropshire was both different and wonderful in its own way. Instead of one girl parcelled to each farm, as the case had been for months, now a dozen girls descended upon one farm whose crop was ready to collect. Lucy didn’t realize just how lonely the work had been until there were suddenly a flock of girls her own age all working side by side, talking and laughing and commiserating. It had been the first summer of WLA for some, while the old-timers of twenty chuckled and spared no sympathy for horror stories of pig castration and diving head-first into fox-holes. 

The long hours of dawn to dusk flew past. Meals were shared in companionable, grateful, often exhausted silence. Nights were grouped in an empty schoolhouse, an abandoned cottage, wherever they could set up a hostel within walking distance of their next farm. Lucy began to have to wrap herself in her overcoat at night, when there was no heat in the house and the hearth was a coveted place. And when she closed her eyes, she could still see the slant of sunlight through the glossy vermillion leaves of Shuddering Wood, like something from Coriakin’s magic book.

~*~

“Farmer Giles’, today,” said Mary, a tall girl in her third year with WLA and familiar with most of the farms in the shire. The meant little to Lucy, who was new to every farm except Prescott’s, but she nodded and donned her long trousers and blouse with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and sturdy leather boots to tuck the ankles of her trousers into. A jaunty kerchief in her hair took the place of the constricting necktie of the walking-out uniform. Lucy surveyed the entire kit with immense satisfaction, and contemplated just how shocked London would be if she marched back exactly as she was. Some women did. One more would not shake the foundations of the earth.

Lucy was on tractor duty today. She’d been trained on it, eager to take on the more exciting work, and it was still a bit of a thrill to leap into the seat and trundle down the rows in neat, straight lines, and survey the flattened fields with their bales at the end of it all. Mary, whose height made reaching the various levers and mechanisms of the baler behind the tractor far easier than for Lucy, teased her about riding her tank out like a modern-day Boadicea. Lucy only laughed. If only she knew!

Afternoon’s lull had well-set in by the time they reached the rows closer to the farmhouse. They still had a few more hours before dusk, but the deepening glow of the sun over the horizon made it one of Lucy’s favourite times of day.

“Tea!” Mary’s shout carried over the rumble of the tractor, and she pointed to the assembling group by the farmhouse, where Mrs. Giles had wheeled out a cart loaded with refreshments.

Nodding, Lucy tugged at the brake lever and let the roar of the engine die down. Mary wasted little time in hopping off and dashing off for a share in tea. Despite the murmuring of her stomach, Lucy found herself struck by the stillness, broken only by the rattling hum of the late afternoon crickets. She sat back in the seat of the tractor, sipping water from her flask and letting the sudden peace seep into her.

Her eyes swept over the golden fields, the little heaps that were all that remained of the gaily waving wheat, except for the few rows left to cut. Beyond was clear pasture, shabbily fenced, with a few goats and sheep lazily dotting the hills, and the quiet, lonely figure of a girl. Lucy shaded her eyes, her gaze settling on the shepherdess. Not a Land Girl; none of them wore dresses to work. And surely she would have come in for tea by now.

Curious, Lucy slid off the high seat and into the cleared row. Her movement seemed to catch the girl’s eye. She turned to Lucy, staring. Lucy stared back. She was not close enough to make out features, but if she moved closer…and if the other girl came closer, thus...

Her feet felt suddenly rooted into the ground. She could make out features she knew, she’d seen them before. But how could she be seeing them here? In Shropshire? It couldn’t be.

And yet, somehow, madly, it was. It was _her._ Lucy would know that face anywhere. Here, in Narnia, in Aslan’s Country. It wouldn’t matter if a dozen years had passed; she wouldn’t have forgotten the girl who had gazed up at her from the depths of the sea at the End of the World. 

Sudden, wild light sprang up within her. Her feet unrooted themselves. They were air, and carried her as the wind. The world around her slid into a blur, as the Sea Girl came into focus, nearer and nearer. This time, there were no waves to part them, no schools of fish to obscure her or fronds of seaweed to cloud her from view. There was simply the girl with understanding in her face, and then a mirror of everything Lucy felt: amazement, delight, delirious confusion. Grass swished beneath heavy work shoes as they did as they always knew they would do.

They rushed together.

~*~

What happened next was always a bit mysterious to them later. They both agreed on the moment of their meeting, or re-meeting, for how could it have gone any other way? Hands outstretched, they reached and clasped and stood, breathless, fingers laced and hearts pounding. They could not speak, but they looked, and each look was a missive, a sweetly-worded letter kissed and sealed. Lucy’s smile lit the fields more brilliantly than the rays of afternoon sun, and the crickets sang under its warmth as fervently as they ever had in Narnia.

Whether they stood thus for a few moments, or a few minutes, or perhaps even an hour, was never very clear. Was it Lucy who spoke first, who whispered with eyes full of stars and golden hair stuck with bits of hay, _“It’s you”_? Or was it the Sea Girl - Sophie - who leaned in close to murmur almost in disbelief, _“You came. You came for me.”_? Whichever way it went, there were no historians there to give an unbiased account, and so we must take the measure of their memories and find it probable that these low, shy exclamations happened at much the same time.

And then someone - it was almost certainly Lucy - let out a shuddering breath, and stepped close and untangled hands only so that she could wrap them around the Sea Girl in an embrace she had waited five years for. Her heart would not stop pounding wildly. She was sure the Sea Girl - whose name was assuredly not Sea Girl - could feel it thumping against her breast.

“My name is Lucy,” she said in another whisper, strangely shy. “I don’t even know yours. But I know you. How can that be?”

The girl in her arms laughed. Her breath stirred the wisps of hair behind Lucy’s ear. “My name is Sophie. And I was going to ask you the same thing.” She spoke with the drawl of a girl from the northern countryside, a quaint and yet comforting lilt. “What are you even doing here? You should be on a ship sailing East.”

Another tumbling thrill somersaulted in Lucy’s chest, to know that they both knew each other from the same place. Lucy relaxed back just far enough to look Sophie in the eye. “And you should be under the sea tending your flock of fish,” she teased. “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” Sophie said, and smiled at her. The lonely look had vanished. In its place was a kind of glow even the sun wasn’t enough to explain.

~*~

More explanations would have to wait. Duty was an ever-present taskmaster, especially while the sun was still up. Lucy could barely bring herself to go back to the fields, but the promise of dinner together when they could talk as much as they liked kept her impatiently tided over until the sun finally set and the girls retired for the evening meal.

The others were too tired and too glad for their supper to notice the two of them slipping away with their plates to the porch of a little shed where they could talk without being overheard. Lucy breathed a relieved sigh as they sank onto low wooden stools and had all the time in the world to share.

Their stories came spilling out in pieces. Lucy condensed hers as much as she could, for she was curious to hear Sophie’s, but there were of course questions, and the answers only raised more questions, and more wonder at where to even begin to answer them.

All of Narnia was new to Sophie. She marveled at each revelation. “Queen,” she said with reverent curiosity, and traced one stray lock of Lucy’s hair with her finger.

Lucy knew that the tellings would take much longer than one evening.

“Later,” she said with a laugh, nudging Sophie. “You haven’t told me more than a word or two about yourself, and I’m dying to know how you came to be under the sea at the Edge of the World.”

Sophie nudged back, but as she never removed herself from Lucy’s side afterwards, it was rather more of a lean that began with a nudge. Her face was turned towards Lucy, letting the short crop of wavy brown hair brush against cheeks rosy from long days in the sun. Lucy noticed the sharp point of her chin, the firmness of her nose, the high angled lines of her cheekbones; little details that she had not had the luxury to observe on the Dawn Treader. 

Her eyes were a wide, searching dark brown. They kept returning to Lucy’s, and scanning her face, before returning to the safety of the shadows from time to time. A lantern flickered on a stack of wooden crates, only a small break in the darkness that had settled around them. The loneliness Lucy had noted from the very beginning was gone, but the quiet had not abated. If anything, there were moments when Sophie simply looked at her and understood in her bones. It was as if, thought Lucy, there was so much to ask each other and so much they wanted to know about each other, that sometimes they could say more by saying nothing at all.

Lucy had never felt such a thing with anyone. It was strange, new, even a little frightening. For the Valiant, it was something that couldn’t be rushed to face head-on, for what was there to face? The slip of a country girl who looked at her and liked her, knew her. Terrifying. But wonderful.

“I’ve never told anyone,” Sophie confessed. Her words came halting, testifying to the truth of her long silence. Her hands twisted around her mug of tea, plates long since set aside. Lucy followed their restless twining. The knobbiness of knuckles roughened by hard work and harsh wind were nothing like the magazines, but she found their legend of strength beautiful. Her own hands were full of callouses and cuts, for half the time she forgot her gloves and there was so much work to do, they’d grow thick-skinned soon enough anyways.

“I’ve only told my friends who’ve been to Narnia - and now you,” Lucy said. Boldly, she slid one hand over Sophie’s and squeezed encouragingly. It seemed to do more for Sophie than a long and rousing speech would have. She stared at Lucy’s small hand atop her own, and the restlessness stilled into communion.

“It all began with a swim…”

~*~

Her great-aunt had wished for a companion one summer on holidays, and Sophie, being an obedient child and a very apt sort of girl, was sent to stay with her at the beach-house. It was less lonely than the farm, even if the children at the beach thought her strange and queer for her country accent and ways. She could still splash about with them, and make sand castles and dig up tiny creatures in the sand, and her shell collection grew to be her pride and joy.

The third summer was different. Only a few months before, her little sister had passed suddenly of diphtheria. Sophie, who had loved her Emmie more than anything in the world, was heart-broken. None of the other children wanted much to do with the tear-stricken, ghostly-pale girl. When she was not performing duties for her aunt, she spent much of her time sitting on the sand hugging her knees and staring at the waves.

Worried, her aunt urged her to swim daily, ‘for her constitution.’ Dutifully, Sophie did so. Her constitution did not change much, save for the pink that finally began to reappear in her cheeks. But there was a fateful morning that changed everything.

The tide was not usually strong before breakfast. This time, there was a current that carried her suddenly and inescapably out. Sophie had become a strong swimmer over the summers, but even this was too much for her. Her cries for help went unnoticed. And eventually, her arms began to tire. She floated when she could, kicked when she could, looked for driftwood, did everything she knew to do.

And finally...she sank.

~*~

“Lucy. The wagon’s leaving.”

Mary’s voice cut through the darkness. Lucy started, but there was nothing to be startled about, surely. She looked uncertainly at Sophie.

“Lucy can stay here with me, if she likes. She’s an old friend.” Sophie looked ready to die with shyness, but her voice was steady, for all its quietness. Lucy shot a glance of pure gratitude at her.

If Mary was surprised, she was too tired to inquire further. Lucy knew the questions would be all saved up for later. “Very well. Good night.”

A moment later, they were alone again, and Lucy threw her arms around her old friend, who was also brand new. “How did you know I wanted to?”

“I knew,” said Sophie, and there was a smile in her voice.

~*~

Her memories after she sank were hazy. Burning lungs, a desperate panic, things she’d rather not remember. And then...nothing. Darkness for a long, very long time. Through the darkness, a man emerging. Not quite a man. For he had a tail instead of legs. Merman, thought Sophie dazedly. He had thick curly hair, and horns, not like the devil, but like the horns of a bull, or maybe the legs of a crab; she was never quite sure on this point.

“Are you Poseidon?” she asked, remembering a book of Greek gods she’d poured over in the vicarage library. 

She swore the merman looked annoyed. “Why do they never teach the young ones about Oceanus?” he said, as if to himself. She had never heard a voice like his before. It was like waves in a storm, thunder rolling through the hills, and the crash of the shoreline, all somehow given words.

“I’m very sorry,” she said politely. “Is that your name? Oceanus?”

“It is,” he said - stormed, thundered, crashed - and she nodded sagely, even though she’d quite forgotten everything about that god from the book. “Why have you come here, Sophie? You do not belong here.”

This was his Kingdom; she was trespassing. Sophie understood this. But she hesitated. “I was trying to go back home. Except somehow...I’m not very sad to leave it.” It was a shock to realize this, but everything at home was sorrowful and lonely. “At least here, I could see somewhere new.”

Oceanus said nothing. She fidgeted. He folded his arms across his great chest, and she felt very very small. “Will you send me home?” she asked, so quietly she wondered if he would hear her.

“I could,” he said. She wondered at the ferocious thickness of his brows, if he was cross with her or simply thinking very hard. “Or I could let you stay, and you could serve my Kingdom for a time. It is a hard life here, for an Earth-Walker. You will find it strange and cold, often dark. Does this frighten you?”

She thought for a while. Her life on shore had been hard. She had found it strange and cold, and now that Emmie was gone, there was no more light to it. 

Sophie shook her head. “I’m not afraid.”

If she had been lying, she was sure Oceanus would know it. Fortunately for her, she wasn’t. He lifted his hand, and light appeared at his fingertips. It suddenly flooded the darkness around them, illuminating a world that took Sophie’s breath away. Watery cities took form, glittering with spires and jeweled halls that rose high on hilltops, rows of smaller buildings dotting the paths through them, hardly anything concrete enough to be roads. Beyond, there were fields of strange plants waving in the - not breeze, but rippling waters. Sophie wondered if those were their crops. Even further out, there were long sloping swells that dipped down into places not even Oceanus’ light touched. Sophie shivered.

“Are you sure you are not afraid?” He sounded as if he was almost laughing at her. 

She raised her pointed chin. “I am not.”

“Very well, then. You will tend my fish, and tend them well. They will tell me if you do not.” She sensed that he was still laughing at her, and she put her hands on her hips.

“I will prod them if they don’t behave, as I do the goats back home!”

The sound of laughter, deep and raucous, reverberated through the light-filled hills.

~*~

There were no beds to spare in the farmhouse, and Sophie’s smallest brother was trundled in the corner of her room. Sophie didn’t have to tell her they must be quiet. Lucy tiptoed, following carefully in Sophie’s path and still managing to find the creaky floorboard.

All of her things were stashed at the schoolhouse that was the makeshift lodgings of the WLA unit, but it was easy enough to borrow Sophie’s spare nightgown, and one night of scrubbing her teeth with paste and her finger wouldn’t kill her. Lucy did a quick but thorough washing up in the sink, leaving her skin glowing a bright pink where she emerged from the homespun shift. 

The floor was cold under her bare feet. Sophie fished out a pair of well-darned socks and handed them to Lucy, who added the jumper she’d brought with her for the cold evenings. And then, there was nothing to do but dive under the covers and huddle close. It was the easiest thing in the world. Shy as Sophie was, she sighed and snuggled near as soon as Lucy curled next to her with obvious heedlessness of formalities or conventions. Lucy, not so shy, slipped an arm around her and burrowed her face in Sophie’s shoulder. Her heart was beating fast again, for no reason whatsoever.

Sophie touched her hair almost reverently. “People like you don’t exist in my world.”

“They do now,” said Lucy. 

~*~

She’d thought life among the Sea People would be full of adventures, and it was. But not quite in the way Sophie expected. During the day - that is, during the time when sunlight filtered down through the sweet waters and warmed the shallows where tall grasses waved - she was mistress of flocks of fish, with a crook that looked quite for show, considering how slippery her charges were. In truth, there were several poisoned darts stowed in the cleverly designed reed, the bottom of which could be pointed at a dangerous sea-beast and triggered with a single finger. There were not many dangers in those waters, however. She often wondered if other parts held more creatures than the mild ones she had seen. They must, to require poison to take them down and not a simple hook or knife. Life tending the safe seas, once you got used to it, was rather dull.

At night, though, that was when adventures began. With the fish safely stowed away in their anemone cave, Sophie was free to roam the cities. She explored to her heart’s content; she listened to the stories the Sea People told, and grew less afraid of their cold proud ways, for they were never unkind to her, never whipped her the way her mother would when Da had had too much to drink and there was not enough supper that night and Sophie asked the wrong question. There was always food to eat in the cities; strange food, compared with home, but plenty of it. Somehow, raw fish didn’t seem so strange when it was wrapped in tender leaves and rubbed with a spicy seasoning, or a silky salad of many-colored seaweeds, or Sophie’s favorite, long crunchy shoots that held a sweet kind of nectar inside like honey when you bit into them. She missed baked things (bread, most of all) and warm, cooked things, but it was better than going hungry like they had at home during the worst days. The Sea People didn’t seem to care about things like money. They had food; they all ate. 

She was almost one of them. She even looked like them, as near as she could tell. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but her arms and legs looked bone-colored, the tips of her hair purpled and feathered. Giving up clothing - how her mother would blush for shame! - had not been as shocking as she’d thought, for nobody really thought anything of it here, and on the contrary, her landswoman clothing had only set her apart and drawn attention to her outsider-ness.

But she would always be an outsider, and she knew this. She couldn’t go on any of the real adventures, the dangerous ones into the valleys or far beyond the grasslands of the Sea Scape. Few would be her friend, and those few tended to be travelers from the West, who only stayed a couple of days before moving on to other waters. She listened to as many of their stories as she could, and dreamt someday of seeing the lands they named.

~*~

“I just baked it.” Sophie somehow managed to look both shy and proud as she brought Lucy the crusty loaf and a hunk of thick crumbly goat’s milk cheese. “And this was from our nannies, the finest in the county.”

Taking the plate, Lucy gratefully retreated from the bright sun and warm fields where they’d been gathering the sheaves, and followed Sophie to the cooler porch of their little shed. She’d even made lemonade for them, chilled from the icebox. Lucy cooed over the refreshments as she tucked in.

Everything about Sophie seemed to draw her eyes intractably back to her. The small, graceful movements, like slipping through water; the swish of her hair; the pertness of her chin. The way she looked hopefully at Lucy to make sure she was enjoying her lunch.

“How did they not notice a difference?” Lucy asked her, curious and frank as always. “When you came back, I mean. You must have changed a great deal in the Sea.”

Sophie laced her hands together. “I don’t think they ever noticed me much, here. If there was a difference, maybe they thought it was my aunt’s doing.”

This lack of attention to the most fascinating person in the world did not suit Lucy at all. “I would have noticed,” she said, quietly. “You parted your hair on the other side today. It’s not used to lying that way.”

Sophie’s cheeks pinked. “I felt like a change,” she mumbled. “Everything is always the same, here.”

Mid-bite, Lucy looked quizzically at her. It was a moment before she continued. “It’s been so many years since the Sea. I wasn’t able to go to my aunt’s every summer...and then last year, she died, and I had no reason left to go. Even though she left the house to me. But Da would never let me leave.” 

How strange, to go from a boundless sea of duty to rolling hills of imprisonment, and never find freedom in either. Lucy set her plate aside. “What if you didn’t ask him?”

She could see the war in Sophie’s eyes: responsibility, familial loyalty, wonder for the world outside. And beneath it, a hunger for something Lucy had no name for. They both felt it, and were quiet for a moment. “I could never come back,” Sophie said at last, softly. “It would be a final sort of choice.”

Melancholy tinged her dark eyes, but the deep longing for something bigger welled beneath the regret. Lucy would never know quite what came over her, in that moment when she impulsively reached for Sophie’s face, but later she was always glad she had. She didn’t even know if she’d planned for their mouths to meet, but they did.

They did.

The strangest, most wonderful tingles radiated like stars from the bow of Sophie’s lips, softening to meet her own. Lucy kissed her like she’d drunk from the bucket of sweet water on the Dawn Treader: reverently, joyfully, raptly. The feelings that spilled through her were much the same. The more she drank, the more she felt drunk and yet perfectly clear and herself, more herself than ever. She didn’t want to stop drinking, and yet she must, sometime.

Because air. Bother.

Sophie’s lips were very pink, and her eyes very wide. She didn’t speak, but Lucy was ever so content to simply meet her eyes and know that in this, too, they were as one. They breathed, heavily, not saying a word.

Sophie looked at her in complete disarray. “How…?”

“Does it matter?” Lucy asked, and cupped her face.

This time, Sophie leaned in.

~*~

Where friendship teetered over into something else, something more, was as nebulous as clouds puffing into something bigger than summer daydreams. Maybe it did begin at that first kiss. Maybe it began much earlier. Maybe they had always been the kind of friends whose souls sang together, whose bodies longed to draw near, who spoke without sound.

But however it started, bales of hay gathered sweetly into the loft of the little lean-to that Lucy had so thoroughly ratted out, so that all of the bundled sheaves were safe and sound as the girls who trundled up the ladder with their basket that afternoon. It was Lucy who’d suggested they picnic there, on the last day of the WLA being assigned to the farm, when everybody was a little scattered and assigned to nothing in particular. It was Sophie who’d packed the basket.

A prize strawberry, small and sweet, burst fresh between Lucy’s lips. “Why - !“

Sophie swallowed the rest of her exclamation. Half a strawberry dueled between them. It was both of theirs for the taking. Lucy’s head tipped back. Her tongue swam with tartness and sweetness. It tangled with Sophie’s, and then her fingers with Sophie’s hair. It was easy to get lost in those tangles. 

They were vertical, and then they were not. Lucy laughed to feel the soft scratchiness of hay at her back, beneath the thick fabric of her blouse. Sophie’s weight was hardly anything on top of her, but it was...something. Something good. Something wonderful.

The way Sophie slipped against her, she could almost imagine they were in water. Lucy wondered what it would feel like, if they kissed there. She tugged at the buttons of Sophie’s dress. “You don’t need this. You didn’t need it, down there.”

A low breath. “I’m a long way from there.” But Sophie did not sound lost at all. She burrowed into Lucy’s hands, as surely as they were ropes tied around her, keeping her looped to their mooring. 

Lucy tipped her face up. “I’m a long way from Narnia. But...I am Narnia. And you...you are the Sea.” One hand curled into Sophie’s hair and pulled her down into the heady mingle of mouths that was not like galloping or sailing or swimming but was just...like kissing. She didn’t need it to be like anything else. It was just like the Sea Girl she’d remembered.

Sophie’s fingers dug into her shoulders. She didn’t speak. Lucy fumbled to touch skin, ivory, not old but new. Homespun fabric parted for her, admitting something much finer beneath. She bent up to kiss the smooth line of collarbone exposed. “You taste like salt.”

She could feel Sophie blushing hot beneath her lips. Lucy laughed against her skin. “That’s a good thing, you know.”

Sophie made an indiscriminate noise. Lucy moved lower. “Here too.” Sophie breathed out, arching up, into Lucy’s mouth. There was another, louder noise. 

“Shh!”

Sophie went crimson. From around a nipple, Lucy grinned at her. Her mouth gleamed wet. “Just for now. When we get to the sea…”

They need not be quiet for anyone.

~*~

The work at the Giles farm was done, and the surrounding farms. In the weeks that followed, Sophie joined with the WLA easily enough for their neighbors, but when a week passed and she didn’t return home, they would truly know. A bit of the old worry crept in. Would they fret over her? Think she was dead? Take her for lost?

“We’ll write,” Lucy assured her, surrendering precious wages for passage to the seaside. The cottage awaited them, and a skiff to be purchased with the rest of the wages. “They’ll know you’re well. And happy. Which is all that matters.”

Sophie’s eyes were fixed on her, like she was the light slanting down through the waves at her. “Is it enough? They don’t know…”

Lucy gripped her hand. “You’ve done your duty,” she said, leaning close enough that their words were lost to any others amidst the hubbub of the train station. “And I mine. It is our time. We will find our way...together.”

It was only a moment of hesitation. And it was not for them, but for all that had gone before, all that was left behind; in the dark years of the War, in the Sea, in the ground where the love of her family lay. But Sophie still craved the light, and the call of the unknown, and Lucy was both.

Fingers curled around a firm-boned palm. “It is enough.” Light shone in the dark brown eyes, as if reflected. “It is our time.”

~*~

Grey clouds hung over the water as the little skiff parted the waves just off the dock and headed into the open horizon. It was England, after all, and not Narnia, or Aslan’s Country, or anywhere in between. But the two women who rowed found nothing lacking in the expanse of sea or each other. They turned their heads, met the other’s eyes, and were certain.

 

~*~

_Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them—a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a shepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy’s face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out._

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [redacted] for the beta love.


End file.
